


Can't Tell Whose Triggers Are Whose

by Nemhaine42



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 23:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3506354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemhaine42/pseuds/Nemhaine42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>... so we'll pull every single one. Clint and Darcy in New Mexico, after the events of Thor and before The Avengers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Tell Whose Triggers Are Whose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GigiDoyle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GigiDoyle/gifts).



> Cornmouse asked for more Clint x Darcy, so this is her fault. Thanks to beta, readbycandlelight, who is really busy but found time to deal with me anyway.

The heavy metal door to the rooftop swung shut with a bang and Darcy tried to dry her eyes as quickly as she could. It wouldn’t do to be caught having her little freak out by whoever had just come up.

She’d done herself proud at how well she held herself together throughout the whole day, from tasering a homeless drunk and government agents stealing their research to alien sibling rivalry tearing a fiery trench through town. It was only when Agent Coulson had presented her with a hefty non-disclosure contract to sign that she’d felt her throat close up and had desperately wanted somewhere quiet to clear her head. She’d left Jane downstairs, nipping at SHIELD’s heels as all the agents returned their equipment, and come up to cry and shake and get a grip on herself.

Whoever had joined her on the roof wasn’t trying to be subtle about their approach. It definitely wasn’t Jane, sounding more like steady strides in sturdy boots. And it wouldn’t take them long to find her, tucked behind the base of the showroom’s beat-up neon sign. But the guy who poked his head around her hiding place wasn’t one of the suits from before. He was dressed more like military than government, with a visible side-arm and fingerless gloves.

“You’re Darcy, right?” he asked, and kudos to him for managing to not sound like a very serious secret agent, which was more than could be said for most of his colleagues, as he looked down on her with concern, “You okay there?”

She nodded and took a deep steadying breath, though she still felt wet tracks on her cheeks and her eyes were wet and puffy. Mr Military sat down on the ledge beside her - not too close, not too far - and looked out on to the trashed and smoking main street. SHIELD cars and vans lined the road but a few locals in hardy pick-ups still wound their way through the giant new pot-holes and downed power lines. Of all the things in Puente, the bar was still very much open.

“Takes guts to do what you did today,” he told her, “Staying to help.”

“Plenty of people stayed,” she replied. Truthfully, most of the town had hardly left the outskirts.

“Doesn’t make it any less brave,” he turned to look at her, all bundled up and sniffling, “It’s okay to get upset about it. It’s normal. You’ll be fine.”

“You know that?” she challenged, looking him in the eye, “Aliens were here today. Real ones. That’s so beyond anything we knew yesterday that it just... ugh. Just because it isn’t gonna be on CNN doesn’t mean it doesn’t change anything. No-one can know any of us will be fine.”

He nodded gently, conceding her point, “Good thing you’re already brave enough to handle it then.”

He pulled something out of his jacket pocket and held it out to her. Her iPod, complete with the headphones wound round it. Her fingers brushed his, warm and rough, as she took it.

“I’m Clint.”

She smiled for the time since breakfast, “Thanks.”

She expected him to shuffle back downstairs but instead he sat with her a while longer, watching the last of the sun sink away. The stars were bright and thick across the sky, now that half the town had no power. Darcy shivered a little at the seeping cold which bit at her fingers but numbed her inside. Clint noticed and shrugged out of his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. She tried to politely protest but the jacket was warm and fleecy, and didn’t smell of gunpowder like she’d expected. Even in the now dim light, she could see Clint was not a man whose job primarily consisted of comforting weepy undergrads. The arms alone were making her feel the lack of Norse god that bit less. Good things lay under that there t-shirt, no doubt about it.  

Clint rubbed his hands together and gestured down the trashed street, “You know if that bar’s any good?”

“Well it doesn’t have sawdust on the floor… which is about as good as it gets out here. Cheap beer, cheap wine, and tequila.”

“So it’s pretty good then,” he made a sarcastically impressed face, “I was off-duty as soon as you took that gadget off my hands. You, uh, you wanna grab a cheap beer or something?”

He was looking her up and down, warm and easy-going and lacking the predatory hunger that guys often got when they went looking for hook-ups. He didn’t seem like he’d be an ass about it if she changed her mind later, but she was pretty sure she didn’t want to spend the night alone.

So she let Clint buy her a few glasses of wine, in exchange for kicking her ass at pool, until she felt buzzed enough to ignore the knot of tension under her ribcage and enough to work out that Clint smelled fantastic and liked to stand close to her. He slid his pool cue back onto the table and braced his hands on the side of it, either side of her and leaning in. His eyes flickered down to her mouth and back up again, silently asking permission. She gave him an answer in the form of pressing her lips to his and running her hands around the back of his neck. He tasted mostly of beer but she probably tasted of wine and it wasn’t putting him off. His arms went around her waist to pull her closer and her blood started rushing around her faster and warmer than before.

He felt so steady, like she could just hang off his shoulders and not fall. His warm hands on her back made her skin tingle. Just as his tongue ran across her bottom lip, she heard someone walk right up to their table.

“Save something for the wedding night, kids,” said an old man dressed mostly in plaid, practically hip-checking them out of the way to set up a new game.

But Darcy was nowhere near ready to let go of Clint yet, and it seemed pretty reciprocal. Out of all the women in this town, she didn’t really understand why he picked her. Maybe because Jane wasn’t likely to be impressed by Earth guys anymore. Maybe he just liked damsels in a mild amount of distress and was looking for some mutual post-disaster comfort. Either way, Darcy wasn’t inclined to say no. Still wrapped around him, she whispered to him, “let’s get out of here. I got a whole trailer all to myself.”

To say Clint was enthused would be an understatement, as he quickly turned and tugged her by the hand to the bar to settled their tab. As they headed for the door, he didn’t let go. They spilled out of the bar and headed for home. Though the lab was only a few hundred yards up the street, Darcy was cold and had fun pestering Clint to keep her warm, wrapping her arms around his waist and nuzzling his neck with her nose. She still had on his jacket so he could only be colder than her. He laughed heartily as she shrieked when he hoisted her up into a piggy-back to carry her back. She kissed his cheek and his jaw and the shell of his ear, right up until the moment he put her down again to open her trailer door.

For someone who probably knew seventeen different ways to kill her with a spoon, Clint fumbled with his clothes a lot, flinging them across the room without much care for where they landed. She was sure one of his socks was in a coffee mug, and her panties were definitely poking through the curtains. But none of that mattered because Clint’s hands knew exactly what they were doing on Darcy’s skin. So did his mouth.

“Are you sure?” he panted, his voice low and gravelly. She kissed him hard in response, raking her nails through his hair and tipping them both backwards onto her bed.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Clint got up before Darcy, used to early starts where she was used to nights. He pulled on his t-shirt and boxers and brewed coffee. His phone had no messages or missed calls and the clock showed that he wasn’t late… yet.

Darcy shifted in her sleep and rolled over into the warm spot he’d left behind. Her dark hair curled down onto the creamy skin of her back, sensual in a way that belonged somewhere far beyond a trailer in the desert. It made him want to crawl back into bed next to her but he knew if he did that, he’d stay all day. And he doubted Darcy would find Coulson knocking on the door to march his AWOL ass back to base all that sexy.

If anyone was to ask him ‘why Darcy?’ he wasn’t sure he’d be able to answer. Sure, she was pretty. But that wasn’t it. There was something about the loyalty, the go-with-the-flow strength that reminded him of himself before the world took hold. He didn’t want life to have its way with Darcy like it had him. How buying her drinks and sleeping with her accomplished that, he didn’t know. Maybe he was being selfish; Darcy was good and she wanted him around, at least for now, so he could tell himself he deserved some good before going back to seeing people through crosshairs.

If he was going to get moving on time, he’d need a lot of coffee. So he skipped the mug and started taking swigs straight out of the pot. He opened the door of the trailer and leant on the frame, looking out at the morning. It was like the whole town had a hangover, the cracks and trenches carved in the road looking harsher and deeper than the night before. Scanning his eyes over the old showroom that housed Foster’s lab, he spotted Dr Selvig staring at him in puzzlement through the window. Clint raised the coffee pot in greeting and Selvig nodded back awkwardly.

He supposed none of the other agents would be comfortable being seen standing in the doorway of the intern’s sleeping quarters in their underwear. _Inappropriate_ , Coulson would call it. Especially seeing how they were trying to recruit the trio to an important project, although his gut told him Foster would turn it down and that Darcy would follow her rather than Selvig. There was also the fact that Darcy was clearly a good bit younger than Clint. But barely twenty-four hours ago, the guy who’d made whole SHIELD units look like they’d learned to fight in a middle-school cafeteria had turned out to be a thousand-year-old deity from another planet… it changed a guy’s perspective. Suddenly, ten years or so didn’t seem like that much of a difference.

Clint drained the last of the coffee and started looking for the rest of his clothes. Darcy’s bra had wound up lying next to the kitchen sink and his pants were draped across the little dining table. Thankfully his side-arm and holster were tucked underneath. Fury would rake him over the coals in a big way for being careless with his weapon… his firearm, anyway. In comparison, a night of fraternisation would go relatively unnoticed.

Darcy was still asleep and unlikely to stir any time soon. Clint felt reluctant to wake her, partly because she’d probably do a frighteningly good job of talking him back into bed, but also because she’d forewarned him that she could be very cranky first thing in the morning. But he really didn’t want to be that guy who just left without a word. He tugged his jacket back on, which smelled faintly of Darcy, and dug around for a scrap of paper and pen as quietly as he could. On a torn envelope, he scribbled his phone number and a short note:

 **  
** _“Duty calls. Sorry I drank all your coffee. I’ll owe you next time ;) Clint x”_


End file.
